Off Topic Books (off topic)

Yep, some texts and stories from the most superstitious part of the Earth, from one of the most superstitious eras and a time when we knew so much less about how the world and the universe works than we do today. People simply rely on traditional belief; if their father's father and grandfather (and so on) all knew it was so - then it must be so. It is the equivalent of sticking fingers in your ears and going blah blah blah really loud.

 

Oh, and The Situation, somebody uploaded them in one long part per episode if you do end up watching them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1ImgOcOPM&t=2m7s

Makes it easier than watching parts anyway.

 

We need to move on from religion, it's holding us back as a species.

Is it apparent I hate religion? Haha

 

Haha, yep. It's a good thing you do though, for you and for the sake of humanity there should be more people who hate religion. There is absolutely nothing wrong with standing up for scientific, rational thinking despite what people might try to tell you about how it disrespects religious belief.

 

For my functional skills assessment at college i'm doing a short presentation about how religion is the main cause for hatred and how we'd all benefit from not having faith in a 'higher power.' It's time I would rather use for the main part of my course but thanks to the government I have no choice, so i'm going to air my views about this.

 

There's a great quote from early in God is Not Great you could comment upon. Hitchens had the following situation put to him: "Suppose you are in a dark alley at night and 3 huge guys are walking towards you. Wouldn't you feel more at ease if you knew they'd been to a Prayer meeting?" He answered absolutely not, and that he could respond with merely the letter B. He had found himself in that exact situation in Belfast, Beiruit, Bombay, Bethlehem, Belgrade and Baghdad. He had very good reasons why he would absolutely not be happy knowing that those men had come from prayer meetings.

 

Saw that quote on a review, he really makes some great points, I bought the book earlier so I plan to give it a read when I get it.

That's me done for today anyway haha, night.

 

Night!

 

Thanks anything to make my life that little bit easier ha....

I feel religon is a valuable tool in early parts of society for there to be order, but I feel we may now have out-grown it! Also I wouldnt say Religon is the man cause of hate, more humans are, humans are the one who manipulate it and try to control people with the unknown.

 

Religion, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies, belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them, they could make themselves "right" and others "wrong" and thus define their identity through their enemies, the "others," the "nonbelievers" or "wrong believers" who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in killing.

ECKHART TOLLE, A New Earth

Pretty much sums it up!

 

Religion is man made though. I can't buy into the idea that religion is okay in principle but that man has corrupted it when you read the fundamentals. Remember that the first 4 of the 10 commandments simply demand that you worship and obey the one god or expect **** to come your way. There are several self evident commandments such as do not steal/kill/commit adultery but they were obvious to every human being long before religion demanded it which renders them completely pointless, especially when you consider there is no commandment that outlaws slavery. And why isn't there? Because the Bible goes on to say, in both Old and New Testament, that slaves must obey their masters.

People do not need religion to live a good and benevolent life. Do all Catholics really think that the only reason they dont go around murdering people is because there is a God? It is obvious to people how they should treat others and how they should conduct themselves and thus all that remains to be taken from religion is the disturbing, archaic messages that fundamentalists choose to subscribe themselves to.

 

Anyway to keep this religious trend on the books topic; reading Thomas Aquinas and Augustine is quite interesting. Augustine seems to base all of his assumptions and understanding of the world on the basis that there is obviously a god, he seems unable to even comprehend the idea of calling it into question. While this is fair enough given the time period and location he wrote it in, it actually gets reasonably funny when, centuries later, Thomas Aquinas actually attempts to prove the existence of God by using what little science of his time that he had available. Fair play to him for accepting that it needs proof, and it makes for a good read with centuries of hindsight.

 

Is it me or does every thread on this forum get derailed?

 

This is weirdly on topic, we're discussing a topic in some books and involving personal opinion

 

When I was at college I had to define a standard business hierarchy as one of the questions worth about 30 points. I had to define:

Roles and relationships etc from the board down to the users.
Show the circulation of cash based on a product.

I chose to model it on the church with the Pope as the CEO, cardinals as directors, bishops as middle management and priests as sales and customer service personnel to the customer base.

They tried to fail me for it so I took it to arbitration showing that the Church had annual revenues exceeding £5 billion so it could be construed as a business where the product on offer was ‘life management’.

Passed it in the end

 

As for recent books; I've finished The Great Siege of Malta and am currently reading A Brief History of France.

Have 17 books on the Kindle ready to go.

 

That's brilliant

 

has it

what i was hoping for when i started the thread


Ps guess the help to find my book went out the window

 

what was that book you recommended for my train journey (took The Humorous Poetry of the English Language instead) it's bugging the life out of me ( travel writer if i remember correctly )

there was what i thought would be crap a program on the siege of malta a few weeks ago was more about the knights themselves very interesting though

 

It's a good thread, got people actually agreeing for once But yes, I gave up after looking on book shops that specialise in out of print books.